(Hong Kong & Bhopal – India, October 6, 2012) The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) is certain that you are all aware of the developments in Barwani where a peaceful march by the indigenous people under the banner of Jagrit Dalit Adivasi Sangthan (JADS) was first stopped and attacked by the thugs allegedly led by the local Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) Member of the State Legislative Assembly (MLA), Mr. Premsingh Patel, and later illegally detained in the compounds of Krishi Upaj Mandi for more than 24 hours. The AHRC has been closely monitoring the situation in Barwani since May 2012 when the district administration had served an externment notice to Ms. Madhuri Krishnaswami, one of the leaders of the JADS and has intervened in the issue.
We had received information from very credible sources that the organisation’s continuous struggles against various issues plaguing the implementation of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), including but not limited to corruption and delayed payments, had upset many vested interests deeply entrenched in the system and that there are serious threats to life and person of Madhuri Krishnaswami and other leaders of the JADS. This is why the AHRC decided to send Mr. Avinash Pandey, a staff member, to Barwani for monitoring the human rights situation here.
Before reaching Barwani, Pandey met Mr. Jairam Ramesh, Minister for Rural Development and had discussed with him the reasons for which the ministry has withheld fund allocation to Madhya Pradesh for the MGNREGA. We have learned about massive irregularities in the way the Act is implemented here. The minister has informed me that the Management Information System (MIS), the most important tool that could ensure transparency in the implementation of the scheme is not being updated on the website as is mandatory and the ministry cannot release any funds till at least 60 percent of the MIS is updated.
In fact, the decision of the ministry had come in the wake of a protest organised by the JADS in August this year. Field investigations by the JADS had revealed that more than 40 percent of the payments received by the state administration from the union government’s fund allocation were neither audited by the state administration nor disbursed to the right persons. The state administration had also ignored the complaints that it had received concerning corruption in the disbursement of assistance. When the JADS demanded expenditure accounts of previous instalments, they were informed that the work-wise expenditure accounts are not maintained by the administration and that these will have to be collected from the panchayats and other agencies.
On 25 August the government gave written assurance to the JADS that the expenditure details for 24 panchayats will be provided to the JADS by 1 September. This, of course was not done. Instead government officers along with village Sarpanchs and Sachivs carried out a “dharna” and held a rally, which was led by the MLA, Mr. Premsingh Patel (BJP). In the rally the government employees and the MLA declared that no accounts would be provided to the JADS and threatened that they would get the staff members of the JADS and the members of the general public who protests against the government arrested.
Villagers who had worked under the MGNREGA then tried accessing the ‘Expenditure on Works’ data maintained by the state administration. This revealed that entries have been made on fictitious works totalling a large sum of money. The data has gross irregularities that show many works that were completed years ago marked as ‘ongoing’. It is reported that an estimated Rupees 30 Crore worth work and expenditure has been left unaudited. Infuriated, the villagers from 12 Panchayats presented their findings before a fact-finding team led by Mr. Sachin Jain, the Advisor to Commissioners appointed by the Supreme Court of India in the PUCL case, in the presence of the district administration, on 22 and 23 September.
Other issues that crippled the implementation of MGNEREGA in the district include doctored muster rolls with even the dead and those in persons being shown as working and getting paid on various sites. Evidently, this cannot take place without the involvement of the local politicians and the administration and this is why they seem to be so irked with the JADS. Further, it is not the first time that the indigenous people are suffering because of late payments. JADS has marched to the collectorate in Barwani many a time before and submitted the list of delayed payments concerning more than 8000 workers, a fact conceded by the then District Magistrate, Mr. V N S Rajput. Even now, the payments due to the villagers under the MGNREGA in the state have been delayed up to several months, and in some cases even payments from 2011 have not been made.
It is in this backdrop that the JADS organised this protest against corruption and non-distribution of wages under the MGNREGA. Their rally, however, was forcibly stopped by the some local goons allegedly led by Patel, the BJP MLA with the police choosing to standby as mere spectators. The rally comprised of more than 4000 indigenous people, mostly women and children.
The police then barricaded both sides from each other and stood in between doing nothing else, not intervening even when a few of the goons tried to provoke the indigenous people by leering at their women and menacingly charging at the men. The indigenous people, however, repulsed all these attacks with the slogan that ‘hamla chahe jaisa ho, hath hamara nahi uthega’, (assault us whatever way, we would not hit back).
The police did not intervene even when some thugs tried attacking Mr. Pallav Thudgar, an independent filmmaker accompanying AHRC’s staff member, Pandey, and the thugs assaulted Pandey when he tried to save Pallav and his camera. Clearly, if they can attack a human rights defender doing his job, one can easily guess what they could do to the hapless indigenous people.
The standoff continued till late the day before yesterday evening after which the indigenous people returned to Krishi Upaj Mandi for taking out the rally yesterday next morning. They woke up, however, to massive police mobilisation that has blockaded all the gates of the Mandi and restricted all movements in and out of the venue. The act, without serving any arrest warrants or other prohibitory orders, amounts to nothing less than illegal detention of almost 4000 people that is completely unacceptable in any democratic country.
Meanwhile, a delegation of JADS members met with the Special Empowered Committee of the Ministry of Rural Development of the Madhya Pradesh government. The Committee is constituted and sent to Barwani for investigating into the irregularities in MGNREGA and delayed payments of wages to workers. The committee members assured the delegation that they would investigate the issue thoroughly and ensure the payment of wages in all sanctioned projects on an immediate basis. They also promised to look into the cases where work had not been sanctioned on a case-by-case basis and do the needful. Placing its trust into the Committee and democratic deliberations, the indigenous people decided to withdraw their agitation and have extending support to the Committee to undertake its mandate.
The standoff on the rally, however, continued till the morning of 5 October, when the administration had to concede to the demands of JADS and permitted them for carrying out a rally.
Despite the temporary victory, the standoff raises several questions regarding the rule of law in Madhya Pradesh. To begin with, the AHRC views this act by the local politician of the ruling political party of the state as an act of organised aggression upon people’s right to protest and speak against deliberate corruption. The act reeks of utter lawlessness where a politician can stamp upon people’s right to peaceful protest and assembly, guaranteed by Indian constitution, and the administration turns itself into a bystander instead of protecting the peoples’ right, which it is obligated to protect and preserve.
Second, the fact that the indigenous people have to resort to a protest, seeking fulfilment of their legitimate rights presents a very disturbing picture. The right to life, guaranteed by the Indian constitution, includes right to secure livelihood and entails within itself timely disbursal of wages. Inordinate delays in disbursal of wages are a form of bonded labour and it is very unfortunate that the government itself is complicit in the same.
Third, instead of strengthening the redressal mechanism, where the indigenous people could go for getting their grievances addressed and acted upon, the administration seems to act as cronies of the local politicians forcing the indigenous people to sacrifice their wages for carrying out protests. Think of 4000 indigenous people forfeiting their wages for 4 days, the amount comes to exaggerating Rupees 492,000. Such a waste of person hours and labour is a criminal waste of human resources in itself; administration forcing it upon the people makes it only worse.
Fourthly, and most importantly, the incessant attacks on JADS and its leadership by both the administration and the local politicians are highly deplorable and should be immediately stopped. The AHRC has learnt that the administration has made a habit serving externment notices to the leadership of the JADS on the basis of fabricated charges only to withdraw them after a while. Madhuri Krishnaswami has been served with such notices twice, while Mr. Valsingh; an indigenous community leader in the JADS is served with the same once.
The AHRC condemns such recurrent attacks on civil rights groups and their rights. Further, these attacks emanate from the provisions of The Madhya Pradesh Rajya Suraksha Adhiniyam, 1990 a black law that has questionable premises concerning its enactment, a fact proved from the pattern of its enforcement. A critique of this law is available at the AHRC’s website at INDIA: An Act to suppress democratic rights
This law allows the Executive Magistrate unbridled powers to curtail the civil rights of a person. The magistrate, after a summary proceeding, may (i) restrict the movements of a person; (ii) restrict the person from entering any place within his jurisdiction and places ‘contiguous’ to the magistrate’s jurisdiction, which usually implies the entirety of the state; (iii) impose conditions upon a person as to contain the person’s freedom of association and communication; (iv) dispossess the person of the person’s property; or (v) require a person to sign a security bond. Worse still is the statutory prohibition in the law (vide Section 9) that restricts the options available to an aggrieved person by the order of a magistrate to appeals only to the state government. This limits the jurisdiction of the courts to intervention only where errors are apparent in the procedure followed by the magistrate as specified in Section 10 of this law.
This law contravenes constitutional guarantees.
The state, in the absence of any proclamation of emergency, could exercise its powers through a state agent (in this case, the Executive Magistrate) to restrict the civil liberties of a citizen. The law crucially assumes that a person served a “show cause” notice has committed an offence; this leaves only one option for the person so blindly charged and contravenes the fundamentals of the law relating to presumption of innocence.
This is a summary procedure, where the law does not require the adjudicating executive officer to write a reasoned out order. Here again the law breaches yet another elementary proposition of justice, where the prosecutor and the adjudicator are the same. Put simply, this particular law breaches two fundamental principles in criminal law: (i) presumption of innocence and (ii) impartial adjudication. This law is, as such, prone to misuse – the notice served against Madhuri and JADS is but one example.
The AHRC believes that this law is not yet adequately questioned and would certainly fail the test of constitutionality.
For information and comments contact:
In Hong Kong: Bijo Francis, Telephone: +852 – 26986339, Email: india@ahrc.asia
In India: Avinash Pandey, Telephone: +91 – 9971581020, Email: avinash.pandey@ahrc.asia
Picture courtesy: Mr. Pallav Thudgar
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